All religious literature printed by Jehovah's Witnesses banned from circulation in Germany

April 7

Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service enactedAll Jews removed from civil service Jews denied admission to the bar

April 24

First SA and police raid on the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah's Witnesses; literature confiscated

April 26

Gestapo formed

May 2

Trade unions dissolved

May 10

Burning of books written by Jews and political opponents

June 24

Prussian State Police ban the work and organization of Jehovah's Witnesses

June 25

Declaration of Facts is sent to Hitler, explaining the politically neutral position of the Witnesses and insisting on their right to teach the Bible to the German people. Two million copies are distributed. Some witnesses are arrested and sentenced to terms in labor and concentration camps.

June 28

Second raid and closure of Watch Tower office in Magdeburg

July 14

Law for the Prevention of Progeny of Hereditary Disease mandates the sterilization of patients with hereditary diseases e.g. feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, schizophrenia. Some 300,000 to 400,000 people are sterilized under this law

July 20

Concordat signed with the Roman Catholic Church

August

At the opening ceremony for the state medical academy in Munich, Walter Schultze, Bavarian Commissioner of Health, declares sterilization insufficient and argues for euthanasia. He adds, "This policy has already been initiated in our concentration camps."

August 16

The Golden Age magazine (published by Jehovah's Witnesses) mentions the existence of concentrations camps within five months of Dachau's opening

August 21-24

Burning of 25 truckloads of confiscated Watch Tower publications

November 12

Jehovah's Witnesses fired from jobs and arrested for refusing to participate in mandatory vote

November 24

Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless,
alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps.

Nazi race hygienists and civil servants plan the sterilization of the "Rhineland Bastards"

April 1

Jehovah's Witnesses are banned from all civil service jobs and arrested throughout Germany. Pensions and employment benefits confiscated. Being married to a Witness becomes legal grounds for divorce. Witness children are banned from attending school. Some children are taken from Witness parents to be raised in Nazi reeducation homes.

Hitler expresses intention to eliminate the "incurably ill" at Nuremberg Party rally to Dr. Gerhard Wagner

October 18

Addendum to the sterilization law forbids marriages between "hereditary ill" and "healthy" people. In addition, forces the abortion of children of the "hereditary ill" up to the sixth month of pregnancy.

1936

Sachsenhausen concentration camp established

March 7

German army marches into the Rhineland

May 10

Burning of books written by Jews

June

Central Office to "Combat the Gypsy Nuisance" opened in Munich

July 12

German Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) are arrested and deported to Dachau

August

Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).

August 1

Olympic Games in Berlin openedAnti-Semitic signs temporarily removed

August 28

Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses. Several thousand are sent to concentration camps and many stay there until 1945

Germans attack Soviet Union Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) follow the German army and commit mass slaughter throughout Eastern Europe. By the spring of 1943, these special killing units kill more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of others.

July 8

Jews in Baltic States forced to wear the Star of David

July 31

Heydrich appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final Solution"

August

Due to public protests led by Catholic Bishop Count von Galen, the killing of mental patients is temporarily stopped - continues in less centralized manner

September

Explosives tried as method of mass killing on mental patients

September 15

Wearing of Jewish Star mandated throughout the Greater Reich

September 23

First gassing experiments at Auschwitz

September 28-29

Over 33,000 Jews are massacred during a two-day period at Babi Yar near the Ukranian capital, Kiev

October 10

Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia) ghetto established

October 14

Deportation of German Jews begins

October 23

Massacre in Odessa - 34,000 Jews dead

October 28

Massacre in Kiev - 34,000 Jews dead

November 6

Massacre in Rovno - 15,000 Jews dead

December 7

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

December 8

U.S. enters WWII

December 8

Chelmno (Poland) extermination site opens

Beginning in December

Some 5000 Austrian Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) killed at Chelmmno in mobile gassing vans. Estimates for the total numbers of deaths of Roma and Sinti range from 200,000 to 300,000

December 8

Massacre in Riga - 27,000 Jews dead

December 12

The ship "Struma" leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by
British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

December 22

Massacre in Vilna - 32,000 Jews dead

1942

January 15

First group of Lodz Ghetto residents transported to Chelmno

January 20

Wannsee Conference on Nazi "Final Solution"

January 21

Unified resistance organization formed in Vilna Ghetto

January/February

First experiments on prisoners in low pressure chambers in Dachau

March 16

Belzec death camp opened

May 1

Sorbibor death camp opened

June 1

Treblinka death camp opened French and Dutch Jews must wear the Star of David

June 23

Auschwitz opens as death camp and work center

June 30/July 2

The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

Erntefest (Harvest Festival) operation launched to kill all remaining Jews in the central and southern region of Poland, call the Generalgouvernement. About 40,000 Jews are shot to death on this one day.

1944

March 19

Germany occupies Hungary

May 15 - June 8

476,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz from Hungary to be murdered by gassing